Now that I've seen a few more Chris Marker films and have gotten a bit used to his somewhat overwritten narration, I might give this one another try. At the time, I found the narration insufferable, ruining a good movie.

Not sure what to make of it. Pretentious, but with a lot of striking images strung together quite gracefully. "The more you watch Japanese television, the more you feel it's watching you."

201

second time viewing, and this just totally clicks with me now. Endlessly mysterious and fascinating.

"there's also the fascination associated with the sacred, even when it's someone else's." A very poetic, meditative travelogue that puts us not in the shoes of the participants, but in an interesting, detached observer's perspective, inviting exploration of the meaning of human ritual and the nature of memory and observation itself. It is a good example of how traveling should be conducted. Also, as this film makes heavy reference to the films Vertigo and Stalker, those should be seen first.

06 Subat 2012 & Sans soleil, metni cikarilasi hatta kitap olarak basilip okunmasi gerekilen bir narrator monologuna (mektuplarina) sahip. Filmin yapisinin kemigini bir cok soruyu cevapsiz barindiran ya da bir cok cevabi soruyu unutturarak ileten bir metin olusturuyor. Chris marker'in bu filmi,'kisisel sinema'nin sayili onemli yapitlarindan. Buna da bir isim bulmali.Kisisel sinema? Subjektif sinema?

#216

Scary, bizarre but beautiful.

I found this film tedious to watch. The overdone color/computer images manipulations just was too much after a while. While some call it meditative and beautiful, I just felt it was too much of the same for too long.

I need to re-watch it, but it's amazing anyway.

At times fascinating, at times tedious, I found this hard to watch all the way through, but in small chunks I found it rewarding. The film aims at coherency by its many callbacks to earlier scenes and ideas, but ultimately its meandering style has more charm in smaller doses.

One of the most heartbreaking and poignant films i have ever seen.

Another of Chris Marker's bizarre little films. What the heck was the term? "Le camera stylo" or whatever -- meaning, to use the camera as an artist would use his brush? Whatever this movie is, I like it

Just images and sound. Amazingly they seem to go together pretty well. It's almost like Brakhage, where you have to just shut your brain off. It took me about 30 minutes but once I put myself in the right mindset, it was a very rewarding experience and I'm looking forward to the next time I feel like watching it.

Poignant, bizarrre and fascinating, San Soleil is a very rewarding film. Although be warned, it takes a lot of time for you to fully absorb and except it.

Well, it's certainly no La Jetee. The narration is merely a string of unrelated tangents, as if it's trying to make a stream of consciousness. If anything, the narration distracts from the experience, despite the interesting thoughts presented. I got something out of it, but I had the feeling that it wasn't what I was supposed to get. More than anything, this succeeded in lulling me to sleep. That said; let yourself be put to sleep by this and you're sure to have some memorable dreams.

233

Pretty complex and daunting. I have no idea how much of it was absorbed but it was still pretty rewarding.

beautiful, very meditative.

What starts out as fascinating gradually becomes drop-dead boring. Some of the bits about Japan were very interesting, but everything collapses under the weight of the voice-over. I hate to use the word "pretentious", so I will try to put it a different way... Marker is trying too hard to be "poetic". Every line seems like its trying to convey incredibly deep ideas, but few of them were thought-provoking. By the last half hour, I was really struggling to stay focused on it.

It's certainly very interesting filmmaking, but I'm not sure it makes for a very good film. There are a lot of good individual parts but it gets tiresome to watch and I'm not sure I get what point the film is trying to make.. The narration is very fast and has a familiar tone that doesn't work too well. The end result is that while it's not hard to understand what's being said there's never enough time to connect the pieces or think about what's being presented.

# 213

Hypnotic representation of a place & time. And Time.

A tough 90 minutes of associative rambling. Insightful no doubt, but whose insights and to what end? I personally find more in Sebald's novels.

This was a real disappointment, though the near universal love for it from voices I respect gives me pause. That said, the reality is this film was a struggle to get through. It constantly seemed like the film was making attempts at profundity, but never really reaching it. At other times, it seemed like the film was delving into the extremes of certain cultures just for the sake of being extreme. I'm sure I'll give it another go in a few years, but the first experience just wasn't that great.